The best thing Saadet learned from Asya was to faint as she did, which allowed her to lighten the burden of the troubles afflicting her mind. Otherwise life would have been too much for her. When she felt dizzy she would take deep breaths and her neck, back and stomach would be drenched in sweat. She would spend one night in that condition and the next morning, feeling rested, she would go out early to the front door. She would face the rising sun. She would feed the birds and kiss the matted hair of orphaned children. She had a lovely voice and would sing city songs to herself. She made every effort to live as though she had been born and bred in the village, but the long winter months oppressed her. Her oppression reminded her of the city and she feared she would one day abandon these parts and go back. That fear continued to haunt her until the day she was maimed by the grizzly bear and became the Claw-faced woman.
10 Brani Tawo
The Beginning of the Cold Season
For three nights in a row I was lulled by the most delicious sleep. I felt as happy as a newborn baby. Beautiful dreams accompanied me as I closed my eyes and remained with me after I awoke.
But it was short lived.
For the past two days I had not been able to immerse myself in sleep, in the depths of that dark lake.
It was now midnight.
When I couldn’t sleep my punishment was not being able to listen to whatever I was listening to, and not being able to see whatever I was seeing. Neither could I understand what I was reading. I was only a few pages from the end of All Quiet on the Western Front and I picked up the book after switching off the television. But I could make no sense of the sentences, paragraphs or pages and I kept having to go back to where I had started.
In the end I gave up.
I made myself another cup of the lime blossom infusion I had been drinking for days. I picked up an illustrated novel from the shelf and placed it on my bedside table.
I put on the CD player.
The sound of flutes rang out. It was as though the gently lamenting airs were coming from a distant garden.
I poured myself a cup of tea.
What could be the price that “it” demanded of me? When I couldn’t sleep I referred to insomnia as “it”, not daring to name it even to myself. It wasn’t enough that I had left my homeland, that my blood had been shed, my bones broken, that I was so far away from my mother and father. But “it” was merciless, “it” had returned to exhaust me.
The pain in my head was intensifying.
Headaches were like poverty, they made you desperate.
The four sleeping pills I had taken since the previous day hadn’t worked. Sleep continued to evade me and my headache didn’t get any better either.
I finished my tea.
I tossed the illustrated novel aside after the second page, switched off the light and got into bed. I pulled the quilt over my head.
That was where the lake of sleep was.
I gazed at the dark water and stepped off the edge of a precipice but I remained suspended in the void. I couldn’t fall into the dark lake of sleep and lose myself.
I longed to dive into the depths of the water and never come up to the surface again.
I thought that this was what the secret love of death hidden inside our souls must be like.
I wasn’t afraid of two or three days of sleeplessness but of worse, as I had suffered in the past.
I remained for several hours with my eyes closed but my mind wide open.
At times aware of the sounds from the streets, at times aware of the flute tunes, I eventually lost my grip on them and strolled amid endless thoughts that a minute later I couldn’t identify.
When I ventured out from under the quilt at ten o’clock the following morning my eyes were about to split in half.
I hadn’t slept even for a second.
My eyelids throbbed and my sight was blurred.
I had a shower.
I filled the kettle to make tea.
I walked over to the window and looked at the rain falling outside. Had it started during the night or this morning? I couldn’t remember.
My mobile phone had been switched off since the day before yesterday.
Sleep was my sacred treasure chamber. While I was there I didn’t want to be disturbed by phone calls from anyone.
When I switched the phone back on I saw the text messages. Two were from Feruzeh. “Where are you?” she said, and “Phone me.”
I listened to the three voicemails she had left me.
She said she was leaving for Iran. Her sister lived there and she was ill. Feruzeh had to leave immediately.
The last message was from the airport. She just repeated my name “Brani Tawo” over and over again. In the background I could hear announcements of planes about to take off.
I rang several times. Her phone was switched off.
I had to go to her house.
The few coins I had in my pocket weren’t enough for a taxi.
At times like this I felt like knocking down the wall with my head.
I got on my bike and pedalled furiously in the rain. Once, on the riverbank, I fell over. A young couple helped me back on my feet and I replaced the dislocated chain and continued to cycle.
When I arrived at Feruzeh’s house I was soaked through. Even my vest was drenched.
I rang the bell and waited.
I rang it again.
I looked at the window, the curtains were drawn.
I knocked on the door. No one answered.
Not a flicker from the curtains.
I looked around, in the hope that someone I knew would pass. The street was deserted.
Azita and Tina couldn’t have gone to Iran too. Feruzeh didn’t mention anything like that in her message.
I propped my bicycle against the wall and went to the corner shop across the road. I asked for a pen and a sheet of paper and wrote a short note with my telephone number and posted it through the letterbox.
They were bound to call me when they got home.
My bicycle was nowhere to be seen.
I looked up the road. Two people were riding their bikes. The rain and lack of sleep had blurred my vision but I was certain that one of those bicycles was mine. At times like these poor people had no choice but to be certain.
I ran after them, calling out.
They turned around and looked at me.
They were two teenage boys. One of them stuck his middle finger up. The other shouted, “Fuck off back to your own country!”
They had realized immediately that here I was a surplus foreigner.
They turned into a side street.
I ran as far as the top of the road.
There was no one there.
When one trouble came the others rained down after it. Today was my trouble day.
Violent urges possessed me when I couldn’t sleep. I was capable of taking my suffering out on those two teenagers.
When I arrived home dripping wet, like a stray dog, I was about to faint with exhaustion, cold and lack of sleep. I jumped straight into the shower. My hands were so cold I could barely turn the shower on. I stayed under the jet of hot water for a long time.
I couldn’t stop shivering so I put on a sweater and got into bed.
I picked up my phone; I wanted to hear Feruzeh’s voice.
In her messages she said, “Your phone’s been switched off since yesterday. Are you ill?” And, “If I knew where you lived I’d come and see you.”
I listened to the same messages over and over again.
Eventually I imagined myself in Feruzeh’s position repeating “Brano Tawi” over and over again when she called me from the airport.
A very long time ago an Eastern master, after spending all night writing about a butterfly, believed he was that butterfly and felt compassion for the master who had stayed up writing by candlelight all night depriving himself of sleep.
I too found myself enmeshed in Feruzeh’s desperation and fear as she tried over a
nd over again to reach me in the last hours before her departure. I was desolate, both for her and for myself, for whom she was concerned.
I dialled her number, her phone was still off.
I sent her a text message.
There was a skylight above my bed. I looked at the sky, shrouded with clouds. On clear nights I could gaze at the moonlight and stars from my bed.
For an instant I closed my eyes that were aching from three days of awaiting sleep.
The key to my sleep house was broken. It was uncertain when its door would open and when it would close.
Shortly afterwards I half opened my eyes again.
When I looked at the clock on the wall I realized I had been asleep for exactly twelve hours.
The whole night seemed to have flashed by in an instant.
I shot out of bed.
I couldn’t remember where I had left my phone.
It had fallen under the bed.
There were several messages. None of them from anyone I was expecting to hear from.
It was almost dawn.
I called Feruzeh again. Unavailable.
I hadn’t eaten since the previous day.
I realized I was hungry.
I put on the kettle to make tea.
I spread butter and jam on stale bread for breakfast.
I watched the news on television.
If I had known anything about the news of the conflict that had been raging for several days in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, or the events that had taken place during the presidential election in Turkey, or the photograph of an Iraqi man tortured to death by British soldiers two days earlier, it would have made me anxious.
I felt as detached from this world as the Iraqi man tortured to death.
I took two painkillers.
The last news item I heard before I went out was that there had been an earthquake in Kent.
I went to the interpreting agency as soon as it opened. I borrowed some money from a Turkish friend and a Farsi-English dictionary from an Iranian interpreter.
They said I looked tired and complained that there was less and less work. We arranged to go to the cinema the following week.
It wasn’t raining today.
As I was walking through the underpass beside the shopping centre I noticed the half-finished graffiti. The graffiti that the teenagers had climbed on each other’s shoulders to paint on the high wall last week was incomplete. They had written, “The art of poetry is” but hadn’t managed to finish it off. The last two letters were very faint, they must have run out of paint.
The art of poetry. Many years earlier a group of us had met in a gecekondu shack. One of us had said, “According to the laws of war a revolutionary’s life is short.” What could we squeeze into a short life? Everyone shared their dream. My dream was to publish a book of poetry and for my innocent gaze, captured in a photo, to be emblazoned on the commemorative posters my comrades would put up after I was gone, like Lorca who died in the war. But so far I hadn’t done a very good job, either of turning my poems into a book, or of dying.
I walked to The Western Front antique shop where Feruzeh worked.
I needed to talk to Stella and get Azita’s telephone number from her.
The antique shop was still closed.
I went into the café next door.
I had a cup of coffee and flicked through the tabloids on the table.
Towards midday Stella was still nowhere to be seen.
I asked the café staff. They said the antique shop had been closed yesterday too.
As I racked my brains for a plan I realized that everyone who had come into my life in this small city last week had suddenly disappeared.
I scribbled a short note on a scrap of paper and posted it through the antique shop’s letterbox.
I walked all the way down the street, past the swimming pool and the big park.
I wandered around the market in the city centre.
I examined the food stalls, admired the brightly coloured jewellery, browsed through second-hand books. I carefully inspected each stallholder’s face.
My mind was on the telephone in my hand. Feruzeh could call at any moment.
I headed to the riverbank and mingled with the crowd sprawled out on the grass in Jesus Green Park.
I spent the afternoon strolling among the people in the park. Everyone having barbecues, playing volleyball, kissing, laughing, sunbathing and reading was happy.
I bumped into people I knew, but none of them were who I needed to see.
I sat under a Judas tree and lifted my head to look at the pink blossoms.
If I were to sleep here embracing the sunshine the world would go on for all eternity.
Perhaps I would hear Feruzeh’s voice when I woke up. We would talk about our hopes, not our sins. We would gaze at the slight tilt of each other’s necks, our slender fingers and the Judas blossoms.
My phone rang. I jumped to answer it.
It was a friend.
My weak heart became a little weaker.
I wandered along the riverbank, with no idea what to do. I turned back and watched the rowing boats.
I went to Feruzeh’s house.
The curtains were still drawn.
I rang the bell. I pounded on the door.
I sat with my back against the wall I had propped my bike against the previous day.
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back. The sun flowed from my forehead towards my neck, like hot water.
I heard the voices of children walking past me.
A bicycle bell clanged. A girl walked past talking on her mobile phone.
Then a long silence followed.
I made a wish and opened my eyes but none of the people I wanted to see was anywhere near.
I slowly retraced the steps I had taken in my frozen state the previous day.
I felt sleepy.
Whenever I started sleeping again after a bout of sleepless nights my body took its revenge and my eyes closed even during the day.
My sight was now blurred and I felt dizzy.
From my dazed stagger people thought I was drunk.
A driver shouted “Bloody drunk!” when I crossed the road without looking at the traffic lights.
When I arrived at the Fort St George where Feruzeh and I had gone the first time we met the sun had set.
I sat outside.
I asked the two women sitting at the other end of the large table for a cigarette. I turned away so they wouldn’t see what an inexperienced smoker I was. I covered my mouth as I choked on the smoke.
The huge park opposite the pub, with its orphaned trees, stretched endlessly before me. The grass under which plague victims had once been buried was now at peace. The lights in the houses on the other side of the road seemed as distant as the stars behind a mountain.
I wanted to shout like a drunk.
“Have a nice evening,” I said and got up.
I examined every bicycle I saw on the off chance that it might be mine.
I bought a few groceries from the corner shop.
By the time I got home I was exhausted.
I sliced open half a loaf of bread and put cheese and tomatoes in it. I ate.
I drank lime blossom tea.
The television was still talking about the Iraqi man tortured to death by British soldiers.
The next story was about the earthquake.
I switched off the television and the light and got into bed.
I had no idea if the door of my sleep house was open. The fate of my nights depended on a broken key.
I thought about my book fortune poem of last week.
I remembered the lines that Feruzeh had translated from Farsi for me: “Let’s believe in the beginning of the cold season.”
Time passed.
I tossed and turned in bed, but in vain.
I realized I had been caught up in a maelstrom by continuously repeating the words about the beginning of the cold season.
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I opened my eyes.
I picked up the Farsi-English dictionary on my bedside table.
I didn’t need to get up and put on the light. The moonlight streaming through the skylight was enough.
Lit by the moon, I flicked through the pages of the dictionary.
I felt like Bach aged nine.
Bach had lost both his parents in his childhood and lived with his older brother, who gave him music lessons. His brother was wary of certain manuscripts, locking them away in a cupboard. At night, Bach waited until everyone was asleep then crept out of bed. He would squeeze his skinny hand through the bars of the cupboard and take the manuscripts, stay up all night reading them by moonlight and copy them onto separate sheets.
The dictionary in my hand was as precious as Bach’s moonlight manuscripts.
I was searching for the Farsi equivalent of the words that touched Feruzeh’s tongue and breath. I wanted to see the words that believed in the beginning of the cold season.
“Iman beyaverim be agazê faslê serd.”
11 Deniz
The Land of Mirrors
When I was little I was afraid of becoming one of those disloyal adults who desert their village. People who took off and left without another look back were traitors to their childhood. The villagers said it was fate’s doing and resigned themselves to it. I was curious to know what my Uncle Hatip’s fate was, and why, whatever the season, he always carried unfamiliar sorrow around with him on his radio. As I listened to the voices on the radio I used to think I was entering another world inside a mirror. In one of my mother’s stories a man who entered another world escaped 1,001 near-deaths at the hands of djinns and huts, then returned. I sometimes feared that I wouldn’t be able to return. Then, when I ventured out into the village in my entranced state, I would tell the children gathered impatiently around me the stories I had heard on the radio. I was a traveller come from far-off lands, an enigmatic stranger whom no one knew. The children who listened to me vowed with the determination of world-weary orphans that one day they would all depart for distant lands together. We were all blossoms from the same branch, I too vowed with them.
Sins & Innocents Page 9